Sofia: Generation Gap
The other day I caught myself using a phrase I swore I’d never utter. It popped out of my mouth easily as if it was part of my regular vocabulary. My roommate and I were watching Friends — not an unusual occurrence in our apartment — and before I knew what had happened the forbidden sentence slipped out.
“You know, sitcoms just aren’t what they used to be.”
Um, did I just age 50 years?
As far as I’m concerned, comments invoking “the good old days” are not allowed before middle age, whatever that may be.
I’m not saying this is middle age, but….
I remember hearing stories as a child of the simple years when everything cost a nickel, people were nicer, and food tasted better. When I drink a Coca-Cola around anyone over the age of fifty, I get to hear about how “it was really so much better out of a glass bottle.”
I’m sure it was. Need I remind you where Coca-Cola got its name? Cocaine. Look it up. So, yes, I’m sure it’s nothing like it used to be.
But this got me thinking and slowly I began to notice I was behaving older than ever before.
For instance, I’d be out shopping with friends and I’d comment on how short skirts are these days and how if I knew we’d be shopping so long I would have worn more sensible shoes. These words would never have escaped my lips a few years ago.
Walking through Target, I noticed a young girl holding a cell phone. Since the girl couldn’t have been older than 12 I assumed, as anyone would, that it was her mother’s phone. In my day, adults had cell phones and kids had toys. (“In my day…” – did I really just say that?)
But when I saw the mother answer her own cell phone, I knew the kid had her own phone. And worst of all, it was better than mine! What could she possibly be doing on that thing? Calling to confirm a play date? Scheduling a naptime? Come on!
I’ve also started to notice my bedtime slowly creeping up — five minutes here, ten minutes there. I remember going to bed a few hours before sunrise. Now I find myself thinking: “I’d really love to watch Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, but it’s on way too late.”
These days just the thought of going out at ten o’clock on a Friday night gets me tired. I say things like: “Friday’s are my night to unwind after a long week.” When did I start needing a night to “unwind?” Somehow in the old days I was perfectly fine being wound.
I don’t know how it happened but at some point I left the land of new – a land of a lot of late nights and limited responsibility where I very much liked to be — and entered the land of old. You know, where it’s acceptable to use phrases like “the best thing since sliced bread.” Or call people “wise guys.” Or grab an extra sweater when I go out even on a hot case — just in case I catch a draft.
This is not a cool place to be. Twenty-somethings shouldn’t yawn at nine-thirty at night or talk about how music was much better in the 90’s. The `70s, okay – but the `90s? Never!
Even I’m not nostalgic over `90s music….
Maybe it’s my quarter life crisis creeping up on me. But anyway you look at it — I’m too young to be so old!
By Sofia
Editor’s Note: Sofia‘s last piece for The Third City was The Cubicle — A True Story. She promises to write more frequently — now that she’s getting her sleep….
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Big Mike: Black Comedy Excerpt No. 42 — Black Is Beautiful
For a hot moment, Chet feels the spark again. Oh no, not for Anna. For the Movement, man. Welcome to the latest installment of my serial novel, Black Comedy.
As far as Chet is concerned, there’s one last glimmer of hope that this whole Changing The World business just might be worth all the killings and clubbings of the last year and a half. There’s a guy on the West Side — a kid, really — who has the magic. He’s getting people excited and he’s getting things done. He’s serious and he has energy to burn. His name is Fred Hampton.
Chet has done a few stories in The Seed about the Black Panther Party’s Breakfast for Children Program that’s filling the early morning empty bellies of a lot of poor black West Side kids. That’s how he met Hampton.
Here’s what Chet has learned about Fred Hampton: He began making noise in the mid-60s at Proviso East High School out in Maywood, just a couple of miles west of the city limits. He earned varsity letters in football, baseball, and basketball. He won a Junior Achievement Award in 1966. He was tall and handsome — he even had dimples — and the sound of his voice could make a girl or a crowd swoon. He could have been “one of the good ones.”
But in addition to his physical prowess and magnetic personality, he had a keen eye for injustice. He looked around the slums of Maywood and saw hunger and idleness, poverty and police brutality. As a high school junior, he came to the conclusion that nobody was going to help his black brothers and sisters climb out of the shithole. LBJ’s War on Poverty and Great Society were sops thrown out to keep The People quiet. The federal government wasn’t going to be our savior, Hampton told Chet in an interview. They talk to us about pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps. Bootstraps — bullshit, Hampton snorted.
Hampton had learned early on that the only straps The Man had in mind would be used to lash to backs of those who couldn’t keep their mouths shut. Try as he might, Fred Hampton couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
He began organizing fellow students. They demanded at first that more black teachers be brought in to Proviso East. Then he expanded their range. There should be more black people on the town school board. Oh, and none of this Negro or Afro-American shit. We are black.
Black is beautiful. That was Hampton’s message as he criss-crossed Maywood. He led the effort to set up a Black Cultural Center in the town complete with a black history gallery. Black, baby. Black is the word.
As Chet took his notes and did his research, he found himself, like Proviso East’s girls and the growing crowds who attended Hampton’s speeches, swooning.
Two years ago in the fall of 1967, Hampton led a crowd of dozens of young blacks to Maywood’s city hall. They were going to demand that the town build a swimming pool and recreation center for its kids, things surrounding towns had been doing for years. But those towns, Hampton noted, were white. Why, he reasoned, can’t black kids go for a swim?
Hampton and a few others strode into the council chambers but the rest of the crowd was barred from entering by Maywood cops. There weren’t enough seats for everybody, Hampton was told. Fine, Hampton responded, we’ll stand. Can’t do it, the cops said. Then move the meeting to a bigger place, Hampton said. Ha ha, the cops said. The crowd began to stir. The cops got edgy. Someone got the bright idea to break up the crowd using teargas. That broke them up, alright. The crowd began racing down Maywood’s commercial strip, Fifth Avenue, breaking store windows and rocking the cars of passing motorists. Just like that, Maywood had its first riot.
Hampton was arrested and charged with mob action. News of the arrest made its way to Washington, D.C. where J. Edgar Hoover ordered his name added to the FBI’s master list of Key Agitators.
A year ago, the founder of the brand new Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers, Bobby Rush, told Hampton the organization needed him. Hampton did not hesitate, he jumped right into the West Side fray. Hampton brought his particular energy and organizational skills to the Panthers. In addition to the Breakfast program, the Party started free law and health clinics. Hampton and Rush criss-crossed the West Side, exhorting growing crowds with speeches about black self-determination. They put out their own newspaper and began a campaign that called for — whoa! wait a minute here! — community control of the police.
While the Panthers had energy and programs and passion and righteousness galore, they lacked that most precious asset — money. One day Hampton decided to put a pistol in the ribs of a Good Humor man and demand his entire inventory, $71 dollars-worth of ice cream. Hampton then passed the goodies out to neighborhood kids. He was quickly arrested, the cops treating him as if he’d blown up the U.S. Capitol and a church for good measure. Which, in essence, was pretty much what Hampton was doing. The Chicago Police had already been briefed about him by Hoover’s local special agents. Go get ‘im, the agents urged the cops.
But if they were going to get ‘im, the cops learned quickly, they’d better run fast. Hampton flitted all over the city, trying to raise money for the Breakfast program, urging pregnant mothers to visit one of the Panthers’ free clinics, and even brokering a peace between two warring South Side gangs. Hampton had brought together the SDS, a Communist youth organization or two, a half dozen black and Puerto Rican street gangs, and the Panthers. He said that turf wars and lesser rivalries only played into the hands of The Man, keeping minority youth in a state of perpetual poverty. In May, Hampton held a press conference, declaring a new force in the city of Chicago — a “rainbow coalition,” in his words — comprised of thousands of young people, some of whom were not averse to packing heat. By the summer of 1969, Fred Hampton himself had become a force.
Chet learned all this and one more thing: Everybody calls Fred Hampton “The Chairman” now.
J. Edgar Hoover thought himself a lucky man after Martin Luther King Jr. was disposed of a year and a half ago but his rest was short lived. Right now, he might wish he had King back on his hands rather than this new kid. Here’s a kid so brazen that he comes right out says he a Commie rat! Talks about greedy pigs and proletariates and revolution. At least King had the good sense to conceal his nefarious agenda. Civil rights? Bah. The burrhead was pink.
But this kid, this Fred Hampton, he’s red through and through. What makes it even worse is he and his cohorts are armed. Hoover read an interview Hampton had granted to the Sun-Times. “What this country has done to non-violent leaders like Martin Luther King — I think that objectively says there’s going to have to be an armed struggle,” Hampton told the reporter. Oh, This Holy Land is in mortal peril. The gorillas are coming in from the jungle. Never has J. Edgar Hoover been so desperately needed by good Americans. This is the culmination of all his work these last fifty years.
Thin blue line? Please. There’s no line standing between civilization and the wild. There’s only me. Lord in heaven, my sacred duty is before me. I will not fail you nor the good people of the United Sates of America.
In February, the Director sent the word to his Chicago field office. Get someone inside that local Black Panther chapter, right now. Break up those bastards and put a stop to all those “serve the people” programs. So the Chicago Special Agents turned up a petty thief named Otis Bryant in Cook County Jail. He wanted to get out in the worst way and the FBI was only too happy to accommodate him. All he had to do in return was go to the West Side and join the Black Panther Party.
By November, Chicago’s cops had raided Panther offices and hangouts three separate times, arresting more than a hundred gorillas. In one of the raids, in July, the cops ransacked the Panther headquarters, destroying office supplies, food cartons for the Breakfast program, and medical supplies for the free clinics. They set some small fires and beat the hell out of the Panthers they’d caught in the office. That summer shootouts between the cops and the Panthers almost became commonplace, with two dozen killed or wounded. Otis Bryant had provided his FBI handlers with invaluable inside information, which they’d passed on to the Chicago police, leading to the raids and shootouts. One problem: The cops had not yet been able to put the squeeze on Fred Hampton.
Bryant enjoyed his work. He was good at it. He rose within the Panther hierarchy. He made a lot of suggestions, some of which seemed a tad strange — like his proposal that the Panthers procure a shoulder-mounted missile launcher and aim it at the fifth floor of City Hall, the location of the mayor’s office. The rest of the Panthers laughed at this one even though Bryant was dead serious. He also suggested that The Chairman was in mortal danger from the Pigs and would need constant protection. Bryant suggested The Chairman have a 24-hour bodyguard. That was a good idea. So good that everybody agreed the bodyguard should be none other than one Otis Bryant.
Just before Thanksgiving, Bryant met with his FBI handler to collect his monthly stipend. He stuck out his right hand and clasped the thick roll of twenties. With his left hand he passed along a detailed map of the apartment Fred Hampton now lived in on West Monroe Street. He’d drawn it carefully in pencil, taking special care to to indicate exactly where The Chairman’s bedroom was, even noting precisely how many inches from the door his bed was.
Join us Saturday for the next installment of Black Comedy.
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Sol.: When Little Creatures Die….
I wasn’t in the ER when we received the paramedics’ call. But when the paramedics came rolling in, pumping the gurney with two fingers, I knew what it was.
She couldn’t have been older than two. Her father found her face first in a half-filled bathtub on the second floor of their home.
Apparently, the older children had taken a bath earlier that afternoon and forgot to empty the tub.
The medic, who was performing chest compressions, carefully scooped her of his gurney, and placed her on our cart.
Her hair was black and shiny, because it was wet. Her lips were blue. And her little hands were balled up into fists, as if in her last moments, she balled them up in one last effort to fight going into the black.
I paused as I stared at this little creature, my brain trying to make sense of what was going on.
I withdrew within my self. All the noise and organized chaos going on around me fell silent.
My brain couldn’t process it. And my normal reaction of reverting to training and getting to the task at hand in these types of situations failed.
I felt like I was staring at her forever.
I was snapped out of my trance by the sound of the doctor’s voice calling for me to resume compressions.
I resumed chest compressions. I placed my two fingers on her chest and pumped.
She was so tiny, I was afraid of collapsing her chest.
There’s nothing you can say….
Her father stood by himself in the corner of the room. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even cry. He just watched in disbelief.
I thought about what could possibly be going through his mind….
This couldn’t be happening, right? My little girl isn’t dying. This is just a bad dream and when I wake up, I’ll open her bedroom door and see her asleep in bed….
I looked at him and thought….
Your little girl is dead, man. We’re not going to be able to bring her back. Everything you see us doing is for show. It’s something we have to do, just to say we tried to save your little girl’s life even though she’s already gone and your life will never be the same….
After about fifteen minutes of working on her, the doc called, “What time do we have?”
“13:05,” I said.
“Time of death, 13:05. Cease compressions and unhook her from the monitor,” she said as she turned and walked out of the room with tears in her eyes.
Nobody else left, though. We all stayed, staring at her as she lay lifeless, her tiny body too small for the cart that adults die on.
When the little girl’s mom arrived, we heard her screaming from the waiting room. When she entered the ER, she ran straight for her husband and fell into his arms.
He looked at her, and then looked up as if he were searching his brain for the right words to explain what just happened.
“She’s gone,” he said. “Our baby is gone.”
The mother let a haunting cry and fell to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.
All movement in the ER stopped as they mourned their daughter’s death. And for a moment, we all stayed silently mourning with them. Then we left.
I went back to the room after the parents had left. I couldn’t touch her right away. I just kind of hovered over her for a moment, not knowing where to start. She was so little and beautiful and she was dead.
I tried to picture her when she was alive. I imagined her walking with that little wobble that babies have when they are unsure of themselves on their feet.
I imagined she must have had the most amazing laugh. I pictured her throwing tantrums when she didn’t get her way, stomping her feet, waving her hands. I smiled and laughed at the thought.
I gently cleaned her, removed all the IV lines and bagged her body….
By Sol.
Editor’s Note: Sol.’s last post for The Third City was Fuckin’ Drunks….
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Benny Jay: Gout!
You’re not gonna believe this, but, I got gout. And, well, I don’t like to swear, but, FUCK!
What’s gout? It’s when uric acid calcifies and turns into this flaky shit that clogs your joints. Could be any joint — ankles, fingers, knees. Want a better explanation, look it up on Wikipedia….
The main thing you need to know about gout is that it hurts. I mean, it’s really painful — right up there with kidney stones and giving birth.
For the record, I’ve never given birth. But I have talked to a few people who have — most of whom happen to be women — and the general consensus is: That shit hurts!
But back to gout….
It’s sort of embarrassing having gout. What people know about it – if they know anything at all – is that it’s something old demented English guys get after gorging themselves on mutton and ale. In other words, it’s hard to look young, virile and studly if you’ve got gout. Not that I’m young, virile or studly. Just saying….
My gout’s in the big toe. Every step’s agony. I’m limping around like Nick Nolte in North Dallas Forty. Good flick, by the way….
It gets so bad I limp over to the walk-in clinic. Only for me they should call it the limp-in clinic. Ha, ha, ha, ha – I got a million of `em….
I get the rookie doc, of course. I mean, what do you expect in the walk-in clinic – Ben Casey? But, I swear, this one looks younger than Doogie Howser….
Sorry Dooggie, but I never liked your show….
“You have gout,” she tells me after I show her my foot.
I think: Duh, doc — I could have told you that and I barely passed biology….
“My father has gout,” she goes on.
Great, now I feel like a real old fart. It took me years to get over the fact that there are younger doctors than me. Now I gotta deal with doctors whose fathers are younger than me?
She starts asking about my diet – like it’s something I’m eating that’s creating all the uric acid that’s clogging up my big toe. Ever notice when it comes to doctors — it’s always your fault?
“Do you eat sardines?” she asks.
“No,” I say.
“Organ meat?”
“Organ meat?”
“You know – liver, kidneys….”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Do you drink a lot? That’s my father’s problem….”
I think: I’m sure he’s happy you’re sharing his most intimate details with me.
I say: “I hardly even drink….”
Then I tell her the whole history about me and gout. Had my first big flare up years ago. Went to Dr. Harvey – the world’s greatest doctor — who asked about my diet. When he figured I wasn’t overeating the things that cause gout, he said I might have a genetic predisposition to it and he gave me these pills that kept me from building up uric acid.
Gout went away and never came back. What a guy — Dr. Harvey. The man really knew his stuff. Plus, he loved basketball — we could talk for hours about the Bulls. When he died, I cried like a baby….
After Dr. Harvey died, I went to another doctor who looked at my blood tests and said my uric acid’s low. I said, it’s low cause Dr. Harvey put me on those gout pills. He said, let’s take you off them and see what happens.
Well — as we can now see — great idea, doc….
After I finish my story, the kid doctor says — “it could be your diet.” You know, like she didn’t hear the part about the lousy advice the doctor gave me. That’s the thing about doctors — they’re like thieves the way they stick together….
Here’s the good news. She prescribes some high-octane painkillers. I haven’t felt this good since I gave up weed back in `79. Or was it `80? Feel like a character in a Jimi Hendrix song: “Well, she’s walking through the clouds – with a circus that’s running wild. Butterflies and zebras and moonbeams and fairy tales….”
I’ll use any excuse to run a picture of Jimi Hendrix….
I pop a pill and go to the bowling alley for Monday night bowling. Get a cane and everything. Not gonna play, just hanging with my boys.
First thing I see when I limp in is Bob, the owner.
“What’s with the fucking cane?” he asks. “Is that your dick?”
“I got gout,” I explain.
“Gout!” he says. “You old piece of shit….”
Ah, Bob – always ready to lend a sympathetic ear.
As word spreads, guys are offering me advice and suggestions. Turns out everyone’s an expert on gout.
“You’re eating too much red meat,” says Mark, the cop.
“I hardly ever eat red meat,” I tell him.
“You’re drinking too much,” says Pat, the plumber.
“I don’t drink….”
“Fuck that,” says Bob. “Too much whacking off….”
Hmm. Well, it’s a theory anyway….
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No Blaise: College Do Over
Four years ago, I started my freshman year of college with two of my best friends and a boyfriend. Basically, I brought my social life with me from home.
When I got to be a senior, in what I thought would be my last year of college, I wondered what it would be like if I hadn’t started the way I did. You know, as if I’d just gone off to college by myself.
Then in the beginning of my fourth year I was accepted into the Creative Writing Track.
Wooo!
When I went to register for classes, I realized I’d have to extend my stay in college for another year to fill all the writing program’s requirements.
In other words, I was going to have to go back for a fifth year for the freshman-year do over I’d always wondered about.
Lucky me….
There’s tons of cool guys in college….
True, it wasn’t going to be just like my real freshman year. For instance, I’d ditched that boyfriend (a long story for another time) and my two best friends from high school — Anika and Hannah — would not be with me cause they had graduated on time.
Lucky them….
Talk about tough transitions. Not only had we spent four years together basically 24/7, we’d lived with, gone out with, and become completely obsessed with each other.
Over the summer we even worked at a camp together — everyday.
Attached at the hip….
That made leaving them behind for fifth year of college even harder.
All of that aside, I’m on a being-positive kick, as I tell myself it really won’t be bad and I run through all the different social-life combinations I’d be a part of.
I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine….
Move in day comes and goes, and I replant myself in college town. Only my writing program don’t start until January. So I’ll spend the next three months living on campus while working a full-time job at a day-care center in the so-called “baby room.”
The oldest kid in it being ten months old….
I go back to college, but all I see are babies….
After having worked there for a few weeks, I realize the hardest part of spending all day with six babies is that they can’t talk. They’re hungry? They scream. They’re tired? Scream. Happy? They make an excited noise that sounds a lot like screaming….
There’s no real reason to try to talk to them. Basically, they’re understanding level is sort of like a dog’s. It doesn’t matter what you say, but the tone with which you say it.
Say, “Who’s the dumbest baby in the whole wide world?” in the right tone and you’ll have them smiling at you like you just told the best joke ever.
Which leaves me looking crazy when I find myself laying on the floor with them having one-sided conversations for hours at a time.
When in Rome….
My first two weekends are pretty low-key. Weekend one I spent unpacking Weekend two I spent hunched over the toilet with stomach flu. I forget what happened on weekend three. And on weekend four, Hannah and Anika come to town.
Rock on….
I used to make fun of girls who make Facebook statuses about how excited they are cause – oh, my God, my friends gonna be in town!!!!
Can’t do that anymore. When Hannah calls to tell say they’re outside—which actually she wasn’t because she had somehow translated my texting her that my address was 922 into it being 806 so she was a block away—I screamed and ran that block to meet them barefoot. I looked like an escaped convict.
Subtle….
It’s gonna be a good year….
By No Blaise
Editor’s Note: The Third City welcomes back No Blaise! When we last heard from her, she was hanging with Shia Lebeouf….
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Big Mike: Black Comedy Excerpt No. 42 — Revolution. Baby.
Anna Michalski has just come from the doctor’s office where she got some big news. Meanwhile, on the West Side of Chicago an emerging messiah-like figure has Chet Michalski thinking maybe the world isn’t so bleak after all. Welcome to the latest installment of my serial novel, Black Comedy.
The construction barricades and canopies surrounding the John Hancock Center have been removed months ago. It’s now the most celebrated building in Chicago and the second tallest skyscraper in the world, topped only by the Empire State Building. That’s fitting for the Second City.
Thousands of Chicagoans and visitors from around the world have been drawn to this site to crane their necks awkwardly and gawk at the behemoth. Today, December 3rd, 1969, Anna Michalski is one of them. She’s been here before, of course. She’s seen the hundred-story monument grow from a hole in the ground to a black steel and brown glass tower whose upper reaches often are shrouded in the clouds. Every time she learns she is pregnant, she walks the Magnificent Mile and ends up at 875 North Michigan Avenue.
Yeah, Anna’s pregnant again, time number three, none of which had been planned. This one is a tad less frightening than the previous two were. For one, she’s married now and so this display of fertility isn’t a mark of sluttiness or stupidity. For two, she’s essentially been alone since she and Chet got married a year and a half ago, what with him off Making The World A Better Place. Their first child is now tottering around their Natchez Avenue home and putting words together in miniscule sentences. Another just might make, with Anna and the first, a happy little threesome, a real family.
At least that’s what Anna is imagining as she gazes skyward at the 1,125-foot high roof, a few high brushstroke clouds wisping above it against a deep blue sky. Anna has been able to push from her mind the knowledge that this little life growing inside her is the result of rape. The law might not say so, considering that the rapist was her husband. The memory of that night on the kitchen floor in early October when Chet dragged her to the tile floor and forcefully put himself inside her is becoming dim. It’s a hell of a lot better this way. The more Anna thought about it in the days that followed, the more she either wanted to put a knitting needle inside her womb or Chet’s thorax, right into his no-good heart.
She thinks: This is driving me out of my mind. I don’t wanna end a life. Jesus Christ, what am I? I hate this feeling. I hate it. Knitting needles! My God! And Chet’s my husband. I loved him! Wait a minute — what did I just say? I mean, I love him. I really do. Even though he’s such an asshole. For better or for worse right? Well, it’s for worse right now, okay? Gotta get through it. I can’t go crazy. Gotta keep my head on straight. I got a baby inside me. It’s the best thing that could have happened.
She thinks: I don’t want to take a life, I want to create it. I don’t want to be a killer.
Eddie Halloran feels comfortable having a bete noir in his life. Its presence makes him focus all his energy and concentration. It keeps him from thinking about the bottle of Jameson’s stashed under the seat of his Toronado while he sits in his City Hall office. Boy, has he found the blackest of beasts to obsess over as the year 1969 draws to a close.
Fred Hampton is a handsome, articulate, passionate orator. He can hold the attention of ghetto single moms, hard-as-nails street gang members, white lefty radicals, and even liberal North Shore financial donors to his Breakfast for Children Program. Just three years ago, he was a precocious high school senior, organizing students and speaking out against racism at Proviso East in suburban Maywood. Now, he’s on the verge of national prominence. He’d be the Star of Tomorrow if he only had the good sense to be a soul singer. But no, he’s chosen a different path.
The Chairman, Fall, 1969
Space
In a speech earlier this fall, he said this: “We’re gonna fight with socialism. We’re gonna have an international proletariate revolution.” Talk like this can scare the crap out of people. Like Cook County State’s Attorney Eddie Halloran. And FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
But then Fred Hampton turned things personal. Eddie Halloran has been telling the frightened voters of Chicagoland that he and his men are fighting on the front lines against the likes of negro South Side street gangs the Blackstone Rangers and the Eastside Disciples. These punks, in fact, are morphing into something more than toughs who terrorize high school freshmen for their lunch money. They’re becoming a threat to Our Holy Way of Life, thinking nationally and even globally rather than restricting themselves to the schoolyard. They’ve changed their names, even — the Rangers now fancy themselves the P Stone Nation, what the hell ever that means, probably some Mau Mau shit, and the Eastside Disciples now say they’re the Black Disciples. White Chicago wonders, What is this “black” shit? Does this have to do with that “black power” stuff? What’re these crazy coloreds up to?
Whatever they’re up to, Eddie Halloran assures them, we’re gonna stop them. This, he says, is a War on Gangs. Hah, Fred Hampton has responded, that’s just a code word for War on Black Youth! Fred Hampton, now the chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party goes a step further. Eddie Halloran is nothing more than a racist pig.
When Eddie Halloran hears this his face turns crimson. Goddamn it, he thinks, I go to Catholic mass every goddamned Sunday morning. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I love my fellow man. I give alms to the poor and comfort the sick. I slogged through eight years at Notre Dame and Harvard Law, hoping to devote my life to justice, hokey as it sounds. I worked days in courtrooms and nights ringing doorbells for the Party. What do I get for it? Am I a rich man? Hell, no! Sure, I got a nice Olds but I see these Mobsters driving around the neighborhood in Caddys. I’m an honest guy, a working man, when you really think about it. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be mayor. Is that so wrong? And now this bushy-haired prick calls me a racist. I’ll be a goddamned. Lord forgive me, but if I ever get my hands on that son of a bitch….
Join us Thursday for the next installment of Black Comedy.
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Letter From Milo: The Bum Gene
Some people inherit great wealth. A select group of inbred Europeans inherit noble titles and vast estates. Some people inherit beauty, brains or great physical skills. Hair color, eye color, freckles, height, weight, even some diseases are embedded in the DNA. Every generation inherits something from the previous generation.
In my case, I inherited the Bum Gene.
The Bum Gene, as my similarly afflicted friend, Bruce Diksas, explains it, is the component in the DNA that compels a person to make stupid choices, opting for instant gratification over delayed satisfaction. Faced with a choice between a brief moment of pleasure or doing something constructive, a person with the Bum Gene will choose fleeting pleasure, every time. Faced with a choice between being a productive member of society or giving in to your worst instincts, the Bum Gene-afflicted will always opt for the latter, no matter the consequences. In Aesop’s fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, the grasshopper was the one with the Bum Gene.
My father used to enjoy the old Rip ‘n Roar. He drank, smoked, gambled, ate red meat, cursed freely and, for all I know, had impure thoughts. If the stories I heard are true, so did my grandfather. And I, to borrow a line from Hank Williams, Jr., am carrying on the family tradition.
I started smoking at about the age of 13. I remember my first drag from a cigarette very clearly. It happened in Jefferson Park, in Gary, Indiana. There was an older kid, maybe 15, named Pete, who offered me a puff from his smoke. It was an unfiltered Lucky Strike and he handed it to me with the admonition, “Don’t niggerlip it.”
I took a drag, held it in my mouth, then quickly blew it out.
“No, man, that’s not how you do it,” Pete told me. “You gotta suck it into your lungs. Like this.”
Pete showed me how to inhale. and in a moment I was hacking, coughing and gagging, while Pete was laughing his ass off. It tasted terrible, burned my throat and made my eyes water. Within a week I was a confirmed smoker.
I started drinking a couple of years later, along with a few of my buddies who had also inherited the Bum Gene. It’s funny how people with that particular gene seem to find each other. Anyway, since the drinking age in my town was 21, we had to find older people to buy our booze for us. Then we heard about Mr. Lucky’s.
Mr. Lucky’s was a bar and liquor store in Midtown, which was the black section of Gary. It was rumored that Mr. Lucky’s would sell booze to anyone of any age. Since we were paying a premium to obtain alcohol from older folks, who sometimes marked up our purchases 100 percent, we made the fiduciary decision to try Mr. Lucky’s. Since I looked the oldest, easily passing for 17 or 18, I was chosen to make the buy.
There was a large black man behind the counter when I walked in. He smiled when he saw me and asked, “What can I do for you, boy?”
“I’d like two sixpacks of Blatz and a pint of cherry vodka, please.”
“You 21?”
“Yes sir.”
“Any ID?”
“Darn, I left my wallet in my work clothes, in my locker, at work.”
“You a workin’ man, are you?”
“Uh huh.”
The man regarded me suspiciously for a moment, then said, “Next time bring your ID. We can’t be breaking no laws here.”
“Sure, no problem. Oh, and can I get a pack of Lucky Strikes, too?”
When I started college, what do you think was the first thing on my agenda? Did I spend my time productively, buying books, sharpening pencils, scoping out my professors, figuring out where the library was? No! My first day at college was spent cruising the local liquor stores, trying to find one that would sell booze to my thirsty, underage ass.
As the years went by I went along my merry way. I was a child of my times, subject to the illicit enthusiasms of my age. I smoked, drank, toked and joked my way through life. The Bum Gene would not be denied.
If there was a party, I was in the middle of it. If there was a card game I had a seat at the table. If there was a joint being passed, it usually passed in my direction. If there was a way to avoid honest work, I found it, most of the time.
Don’t get me wrong. A lot of people inherit the Bum Gene and still succeed in life. Ulysses Grant was a drunkard. Bill Clinton was a serial womanizer. Dostoevski was a degenerate gambler. Keith Richards, well, let’s just say that he must have inherited Bum Genes from both sides of his family.
In my opinion, the main problem with the Bum Gene is that no matter how much you personally enjoy the condition, the last thing you want to do is pass it down to your children. I’ve got two lovely daughters and both of them seem to have avoided their father’s propensity for the high life, or, more properly, the low life. They are two hard-working, responsible young ladies. I’m very proud of them. But if I ever catch them with a pack of Lucky Strikes…
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Candyman. Written by Benny Jay. Read by Joel Reitsma, Lorenzo Toia, Ray Jay 3000, Andy Orscheln and No Blaise. Produced by Jus Buckingham of King Conundrum Productions.
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